As someone who played BTS literally to death (i quit at immortal because it forced a game style i didnt like) i agree on the AI in 4
They did feel like they had personalities.. and when you traded successfully with them, fought alongside them etc.. you really felt like you were forging an alliance with them.. a friendship.
Thats why i was horrified to read that the AI hates you for 'trying to win the same way as them' because the ai is not supposed to 'think' its a game!
That modifier was in vanilla. It was removed in G&K and is also not in BNW, partly because it attracted such violent criticism.
Even in a game context it makes little sense as a motivation - why should they be more upset you're trying to win the same victory than trying to win a different one? Upset if you're close to getting any victory, possibly.
At the time I favoured it somewhat as promoting strategic choice by the player insofar as you would have to consider the motivations of each AI when deciding what victory condition to aim for, however having played two expansions without that modifier I can certainly agree that removing it was the correct way to go.
Its hard to explain...but i want immersion with real feeling characters around me.
I've always had that sense in Civ V - BNW sadly I feel has it less, because world events (ideology and trade) seem to override individual AI personalities for the most part, but my faith has been restored somewhat by my last full game in which game-long relationships and animosities survived into the ideological era rather than suddenly being overridden by who has which ideology. I suspect though that was partly because all but one civ took Order, so there were no real grounds for ideological conflict.
I haven't had anything close to that sense of immersion going back to Civ IV. That may be because I don't feel I know who the civs are as well, but from only a small number of recent experiences I've had games in which all civs act the same way. For instance in a game with Frederick, Mansa Musa and Zara Yaqob, all three of them just spammed cities everywhere cities would fit and played peacefully with me - in Civ V, if I have their equivalents - Bismarck, Askia and Haile Selassie - I can be fairly sure they'll behave rather differently from one another.
In another, earlier game, immersion was ruined so much by my being able to attack the Aztecs within their ally Joao's capital, and that without incurring any negative diplo modifiers (the Aztecs attacked me), that it spoiled my experience of Civ IV diplomacy for quite some time subsequently. That gave me no sense of personality at all, just of code doing its thing (Aztecs were the attacker, so "warmonger penalty" never triggered at all - BNW is a big advance over this with its penalty tied to success in capturing cities).
ive just read the interview with shafer and he pretty much admits he screwed up the ai-human interaction, but im still enjoying the game so far... and havent booted bts back up since getting it.
I'd take that interview with a pinch of salt. It was released alongside a pitch for the game he's working on, a game he likely wants to use to attract Civ fans away from Civ V, and basically read as though he'd copy-pasted most of the complaints from the Civ V Rants Thread.
Possibly I'm being cynical, but to me it read "Please buy my game, I'll fix all the stuff you moaned about in my last one!" rather than being a genuinely thought-through critique of his prior work.
This tale kind of underlines my point. As a human, reading about your behaviour in game, i'd say you've been a scheming, manipulative warmonger. You used the Aztecs as pawns - they should hate you for it. Indeed, you could argue that a lot of the hate for the west in the middle east comes about because of the proxy wars of the cold war era.
Possibly I described the situation badly - I was the defender in every war, I didn't start one all game, I offered peace when I was in a position to take enemy cities instead, and only took two cities (one of which was recapturing one I'd lost). I only brought Monty in to attack someone I was already at war with (though sure I could have bribed him to attack someone else entirely). This quite reasonably gives a positive modifier for fighting against a "common foe", which makes it more likely Monty (or anyone else) will stay onside.
I'd tried to be a fully loyal ally to my in game friend, in the same way that the USA or Canada was to the UK in WWII, being quite happy to help them take over the planet while i work towards a science victory - yet they reward by trying to kill me , because my army is away from home HELPING THEM.
I treat my allies the same, and usually get the same in return.
One of my most memorable Civ V games was either in vanilla or early G&K. Catherine was the leading civ, aiming for science victory. I (Siam) was close to culture victory. My aggressive neighbour Nebuchadnezzar was between me and Russia, and eventually after a lot of posturing declared war on me. I appealed to Catherine for help - she responded by nuking Borsippa. She had nothing to gain from that war, but also nothing to lose as she was tech leader and militarily unassailable. We ended up with a very consistent series of joint attacks against Babylonian cities - my artillery and Cathy's Mech Inf for the most part, giving her free cities for her help in my war.
While this seemed a very real alliance, I was thinking all the time "poor stupid AI, she doesn't know she's helping me win culture victory". Of course, what I didn't know is that the game was already settled - she was further ahead than I'd realised and I had no way of winning culture victory before the Russian spaceship took off.
I didn't care in the slightest, because she'd earned it.
I can't recall even back in its heyday giving the AI that much credit as both a personality and an ally. It's happened since to a lesser degree (I actually felt bad for bringing Bismarck into a war that ended up getting one of his cities nuked, since for the first and only time in Civ V he was a staunch, unflinching ally for the whole game). Civs I like and have generally good relations with on multiple playthroughs - particularly Nebuchadnezzar (he got a personality makeover in G&K, I think) - I will go out of my way to ally with and to help even if they're not the obvious best choice. I've had games where I actively protected Harald's last city because the poor drunken oaf always makes too many enemies and can never back up his posturing.
Yes, sometimes things go bad. I had one game in which Sejong declared war on me. Isabella ominously moved her army on the same undefended city Sejong went after ... then declared war on Sejong, beat off the Korean attack, and left again. I've never seen anything else like it in Civ V - I could see no motive for her troop movements other than to defend my city, and she got nothing out of it, nor did she try moving on to the now vulnerable Korean city.
On the downside, she later declared war on me over my iron city and forced me out of that game.
I've not played Civ 4, only the original MS-DOS Civ, Civ V Vanilla and G&K, but it sounds like Civ V could do with a dose of this treatment.
Actually in principle I'm very glad they changed it - it's a large part of what made Civ IV's AI so exploitable (keep a few positive modifiers and you'll never go to war), it's wildly unrealistic and feels like the computer numbers game it is, and it leads to basically endless enmity - once you've got to the bottom of that spiral of hatred it's very hard to get back to normalised relations, and because the AI's only real trigger for "shall I declare war?" seems to be "how much do I hate you?" (slightly oversimplified - I believe it did take some account of military strength) you can't declare peace without getting war again almost immediately after the peace treaty wears off however badly they were mauled the first time (which exacerbates the spiral of hatred because you don't get the "Years of peace have strengthened our relations" positive, or any positives for trade or open borders as these aren't options in wartime).
The strength of the system is, of course, that it's very easy for an AI to calculate when it wants to go to war, which Civ V undeniably struggles to do with its more complex demands on AI decision-making.
In three quarters of the games I eventually get backstabbed by a former ally, despite having given them zero reasons to hate me. The arrival of their Unique Unit makes them think they have an opportunity to steal some of my land, and opportunity wins out over principle every time. I can deal with these attacks, and usually profit from them, but such faithlessness from EVERY SINGLE leader is quite depressing. Also, having done it once, they will keep backstabbing over and over - the only way to stop this harassment is to cripple them by capturing their strongest cities - then they will hate you for the rest of the game for being a warmonger, taking their capitol etc. - but will be too weak to do anything other than denounce.
I agree that having some "black hat" villans and bad boys makes the game more exciting, but every leader should not behave like this.
Which version are you playing? That sounds a description of the difficulties a lot of people had with vanilla when diplomacy was more opaque - G&K changed this by given an automatic early positive for embassies and making civs less likely to covet your lands. This is also I suspect why a lot of people felt the AIs lacked personality - they had the personality coding they do now, but they did all react similarly to coveting land, and if they are all under the influence of an overriding environmental modifier they'll end up acting the same way and their charming personalities won't shine through.
An example of my games -
I play peacefully looking for a science win. I meet one of my neighbours, they are friendly, there are no negative modifiers. I do not settle within 8 tiles of any of their cities. I offer them open borders, defensive pacts, give them unused lux and resources, i loan them money when needed to keep up a steady stream of research agreements. I friend their friends, denounce their enemies and declare war on Civs they are fighting, using my small but well-teched army to help their campaigns. When they ask for help in the way of resources or cash, i provide it. Yet despite having 6 or so positive modifiers and no negatives, the usual result is backstab. It ends badly for them, but that's beside the point. I'd like the game to recognise that degree of loyalty. The AI doesn't even stand to gain anything by attacking me - want my Aluminum? All they had to do was ask for it.
Hmm, if that's not an exaggeration it doesn't sound as though you're doing anything wrong diplomatically - most of the complaints I read of this kind back in vanilla turned out to be from people who'd make maybe one declaration of friendship, or try befriending everyone indiscriminately (and so earn the ire of everybody for making friends with their enemies), and playing the way you describe shouldn't lead to problems. Do you pay attention to who your friends are denouncing and make sure to denounce the same people? That's usually a big help.
a) Stalin and Hitler were the two biggest douches the world has ever seen. In Civ terms, this is like Atilla and Dido being allied. You expect one to betray the other very soon.
When people suggest bringing Hitler into Civ I've tended to think to myself "Yes, that fits - he plays exactly the way the Bismarck AI does. He declares war on one civ (Russia) while still at war with others, he declares war on another (America) he has no need to declare war on since they're already in a war with Japan and no immediate threat to him, and he throws units away in badly thought-out city attacks." Give the AI a tendency to randomly delete its best Great Generals and you'd have Hitler's approach to warfare down pat.
